Performer: Scheepers, Ralf
Label: Frontiers Records
Released: 2011
Duration: 52:32
Rating: 4.5/5
Ralf Scheepers is widely regarded as one of the greatest Euro power metal vocalists. If you’ve never heard of him and this is the first you’re hearing of the guy, you must have spent the last 15 years somewhere far outside our Solar System. In the eighties, Ralf’s career ran through stints with Tyran Pace and Gamma Ray, but the most important move for him was founding Primal Fear with his buddy Mat Sinner in 1996. The band is still going today, and in times that aren’t exactly kind to power metal, it keeps up an impressively consistent run of live shows on regular tours and studio releases.
Ralf Scheepers could tell you that his solo debut made room for some ideas he couldn’t, or wasn’t allowed to, bring to life inside Primal Fear. Since this vocal titan has looked up to Rob Halford from the very beginning, comparisons to him are unavoidable. Just as unavoidable are comparisons between some of the songs and the Primal Fear sound, which is only logical.
An important move that gives the singer extra room to maneuver is the decision to go simply by the name Scheepers, which lets him put together a band to back him on stage in the future, if lady luck cooperates, of course. Rob Halford pulled the same trick when he kicked off his solo career.
The material is more than pleasantly varied, yet from the first minute to the last it’s a textbook example of the purest Euro power metal of authentic Teutonic German jurisdiction, as much as you could possibly imagine. Rock-solid, uncompromising, primal biting. On top of that, to spice up an album that, with its 12 tracks, runs a bit longer than ideal, Ralf decided to cover the Tyran Pace classic Saints Of Rock, whose anthemic ferocity gets even more of a boost in this updated version, and right behind it comes another one, Before The Dawn, which belongs to none other than metal forefathers Judas Priest.
For the album, the singer assembled a colorful crew that built everything around the songs. On drums he called in the versatile Swedish artist Snowy Shaw (Mercyful Fate, King Diamond, Dream Evil, among others), and together with guitarist “Metal” Mike Chlasciak (Halford) on the opener Locked In the Dungeon, alongside Scheepers’ steely vocal performance, he conjures up a similar atmosphere to the opening of Halford’s studio debut “Resurrection”. In other words, Painkiller-grade energy. On Remission Of Sin that energy is doubled, when former Judas Priest screamer Tim “Ripper” Owens himself joins Ralf for a duet. It’s an excellent combination that everyone who loves bulletproof, rock-solid vocal delivery with seasoned extreme high notes will applaud. We’re talking about actual singing here, not hiding behind effects and trickery like the extreme branches of other metal genres do. Remission Of Sin is old-school Accept in its riff, and the shape of the chorus melody adds to that feel. Cyberfreak cements the nods to late Judas Priest/Halford tracks, and the album doesn’t let up on that front. In the second half, the uncompromising, red-hot welded steel of the album is reinforced by Back On The Track and Dynasty, plus the closing punch, the Primal Fear-style march Play With Fire (no, not a cover of the song of the same name by Slovenia’s Lene kosti), the kind of thing Primal Fear haven’t done since the album “Nuclear Fire”.
Stylistically, the only odd one out on the album is Compassion, tacked on at the end, which nobody would miss if it weren’t there. It has a bit of folklore, some “farm scenes” and pastoral elements, and it belongs more in a proper German tavern thick with the smell of boiled sausages and sauerkraut.
The Fall is mid-tempo, and it’s impossible to miss the contribution of Ralf’s Primal Fear bandmate Magnus Karlsson, since it’s the album’s melodic number, yet it keeps a 100% classic heavy metal stance throughout. With it, the album’s doomy, dark atmosphere swells, which heavy metal absolutely needs if it’s going to hit with full-energy purpose. Doomsday deepens those elements and embodies the album’s moment of highest melodic compactness, and once again Magnus Karlsson has the main say in the arrangements, preparing even more fitting ones for Scheepers, who cashes them in fully with his unique vocal stamp and takes the song to the max, both in melodic, hard-hitting ferocity and in the dark effect of its captured mood. Similar feelings are sketched later, in captured atmospheres, by the album’s most varied track The Pain Of The Accused, which showcases Ralf Scheepers’ extraordinary vocal versatility and flexibility in the most concise way.
On this album Ralf makes no mistakes. At every moment his vocal presence (and voice) is exactly where it needs to be. Besides his exceptional vocal qualities, the arrangements and performances of the crew around him are almost equally decisive for the quality of this album. First and foremost, there are the years of experience and the longtime friendship with Primal Fear partner Mat Sinner, who again delivered a superb production that pulses with life and emphasizes dynamics and a high degree of primal metal punch. It’s the fruit of many years of experience and mutual familiarity that plays no hide-and-seek, built on the solid focus of seasoned musicians who know crystal-clearly the methods and the way to reach a given goal. And of course there are the out-of-this-world guitarists Victor Smolski (Rage), Kai Hansen (Gamma Ray), Alex Beyrodt (SInner, Primal Fear), Mike Chlasciak (Halford), Magnus Karlsson (Primal Fear, Lande/Allen) and Sanders Gommars (After Forever), who each, with their transitional ornaments and especially their solos, lift and deepen the variety of this album’s legacy and so share the responsibility for its high quality.
The album “Scheepers” is an achievement that, with its old-school power metal defiance, will delight everyone who misses the ferocity of Primal Fear up to the era of the album “Devil’s Ground”, and with its quality it also opens the (optional) door for Ralf Scheepers to seriously launch a solo career, put out follow-ups to this debut, and, if possible, put together a live band. If you’re a fan of the old German school of Teutonic power metal terror, you absolutely have to check out “Scheepers”!
Lineup
Ralf Scheepers – vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards
Magnus Karlsson – guitar, banjo (track no. 12), keyboards
Sander Gommans – guitar
Mat Sinner – bass guitar, keyboards
Snowy Shaw – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS
Tim “Ripper†Owens – vocals on track no. 2
Kai Hansen – guitar
Mike Chlasciak – guitar
Alex Beyrodt – guitar
Victor Smolski – guitar
Production
Mat Sinner & Ralf Scheepers
Tracklist
1. Locked in the Dungeon (4:08)
2. Remission of Sin (4:09)
3. Cyberfreak (3:45)
4. The Fall (4:05)
5. Doomsday (6:28)
6. Saints of Rock (4:32)
7. Before the Dawn(3:06)
8. Back on the Track (4:40)
9. Dynasty (3:57)
10. The Pain of the Accused (6:18)
11. Play with Fire (4:08)
12. Compassion (3:16)
